Strong Heart
It’s 1:37am now. I walked to the store and could have sworn that my clock said 11pm. I mumbled to myself “Foolish girl, you have your glasses on but still can’t see”
It was about 9 or 10 and I was watching a trial show on Netflix. Arguing with the TV per usual. I tend to have an opinion on everything. Which could be annoying for anyone watching TV with me, but I am always watching TV alone and fine with the TV not talking shit back to me.
I took my pulse. 68. Which is normal 60-100 is good. I really don’t like taking medicine, but I knew that I needed to calm down. Whenever I sit in my mind and think about certain things, I get anxious. And I really feel a pounding in my head. I had gone to the nightstand and grabbed my Hydroxyzine. Being someone familiar with Pharmacology and the nuance of how it works in the body, it usually sits there in the bottle undisturbed. But these past couple of days have been immense.
It’s a feeling of remorse. It’s a feeling of guilt. It’s a feeling of sadness.
There are men and women that walk this earth and are so pressed with angst for my desire to leave them with no other choice but to find someone else. To give them no reason to talk. No reason to explain. And that is not fair. I think about that all the time. More than you think. I think about families, kids, cooking, community and more. And I tell myself that I will not experience that the way I want to if I don’t get out of the depressive states that I am in most times. Feeling a drought is not good. It’s hardening my heart sometimes.
I guess I never really sat and worked through these emotions before. I would just move on. We are taught to just move on so much in life. Fall and bust your knee, move on. Get your heart broken, move on. And it’s that feeling that someone has that they don’t have a chance to come and redeem themselves. And truthfully that’s what hurts me the most. That I can shock myself with how enclosed I will make myself become. I will want to focus on something that will better my sense of judgement. My emotional intelligence. My sensuality, such as getting my hair done in a different style. All to better myself, or so I think.
But what if bettering yourself is making it possible for someone to have a way to come back and apologize for not being there when you needed them. For not knowing what you needed. For not being who you needed them to be. For not having something inside them that you could call forever. For not being your forever. It’s sometimes appalling to me, the frustration I hold in my heart when I think about these things. Because I crave closeness in so many aspects of life.
I guess I just fear rejection like everyone else does at some point in life. And in order to avoid feeling that rejection, I put a stop to feeling anything at all. That’s the hardest part. The raw form of emotion is being able to cry in front of someone. And that, to me is true vulnerability. But what does that do for you as a person? In my heart it makes me want to make you stay longer. But sometimes I don’t cry at things other people cry at. I know what it means to be the strong person in the room when a patient is dying. And so I attribute that sometimes in life and apologize for not wanting to show emotion to some people. Although I am genuine, I don’t want you to think that just because I feel uncomfortable crying in front of you, that I don’t cry about you.
I feel that loneliness set in and don’t want to adhere to it. I don’t want to feed into it. I don’t want to see why it’s there in the first place. I just want to move past it. And most often it’s because I have shut myself out of community engagements that really truly do make me happy. Let’s say a speaking engagement for example. A psychology based one. And the man is talking about depression. I will likely cry. And that crying in front of other people will make me feel invalidated. I don’t know why. But I won’t want to feel that so I might not go to the speaking engagement. Confronting my fears is really the most important part of my life right now.
I am afraid of love. Afraid of getting close to someone. Afraid of building a relationship with your kids and with the tumultuous ups and downs in a relationship; having them ripped from my heart. So, I avoid it. That’s the boldest truth. And it hurts. I know people feel this same emotion sometimes, but what does it prevent you from doing in life? What does it prevent you from feeling in life? Where does it prevent you from going?
Procrastination has always been a problem for me. I have always had an issue with being able to assert myself in a manner that can exemplify a solid routine unless I can clear my mental and have the essential things in life set up the way they need to be. And even if my Maslow’s triangle is satisfied, there will be a precedence of fear that then folds into procrastination, and I don’t get as far as I want to.
I think it was me dancing around as a little girl thinking that one day I will have a husband. I loved the old movies and watching the love stories. Putting myself in their shoes. Having children and getting married are dreams that people do hold dear. But they are also things that people get mad at themselves about if they don’t succeed at. They feel like they are less than if they aren’t married.
And back in the old days, if you weren’t married by a certain age you were shunned by the community. They did not look at you like a pillar of strength. They looked at you as weak. Something is wrong with you. Why is it that everyone else can find a husband but you can’t? What the fuck is wrong with you? “An Unmarried Woman” (1978) is a great movie. Discusses societal expectations to a great detail. But you will understand old mannerisms in society. I will watch an old movie with a great big massive smile on my face. And sing along to old Dean Martin songs.
That’s how it would come off, the judgement from other people. And so, you begin to see why a woman would be so depressed. And feel so low. Useless. Worthless. Because all around her people were getting married, but she was not someone that was getting married. I will never forget a scene of this one movie where the woman was walking around the kitchen talking about how she could not wait to get married. Because she was tired of the town talking about her like she was the town whore. And it was true. That was how people would talk about you at the time. Like you were just a tramp if you weren’t married. Especially by a certain age. And being that I am almost 40, I know I had felt that for myself. Partially because my love for old movies and the way that I had adored them all throughout my life. But it wasn’t until I started to take a deeper look at my own life that I realized a part of why I am the way I am, and things are the way they are is because of how I feel. How I treat love. How I treat forgiveness.
So, my objective was to get better at these things. To work through the parts of life that had been hardest to work through. Giving myself the opportunity to be honest with myself. What if there is a person that’s out there that is so concerned about my blood pressure, anxiety and pulse that it affects his movements? What if I have already been with this person, and still decide to disregard that they want a second chance? What if my own insecurities are the very reason they shy away from me?
They describe a strong pulse sometimes as a bounding pulse. And that’s all I want my heart to be, a strong heart.
XOXO,
El’Aundra
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